


let me in through your window

by jeannedarc



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: (sorta) - Freeform, Blood, M/M, Meet-Cute, Vampires, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/pseuds/jeannedarc
Summary: Johnny knows he’ll justify anything. Especially when he’s got a hot but very probable murderer in his living room.
Relationships: Mark Lee/Suh Youngho | Johnny, gentle side nahyuck
Comments: 23
Kudos: 143





	let me in through your window

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to ao3 user [freelancejouster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freelancejouster) for the commission ♥ it was a blast to write and i'm really pleased with it  
> today: no beta in this house we die like warriors

Living alone is great. Johnny had decided that on the first week without roommates.

For starters, he’s never really alone, because his friends are fortunately the sort that invite themselves over at random. Doyoung and Taeyong tag-team him constantly, reminding him to eat, to drink water, to sleep. Sicheng and Kun bring him leftovers from their homemade meals (well, Kun’s, though Sicheng takes every opportunity to praise every meal his husband has ever made, much to Kun’s blushing chagrin). Donghyuck… Well, Donghyuck is good at taking up space, reminding Johnny to clean his altar, light his candles, present new offerings to the Goddess.

It’s Donghyuck’s fault Johnny lives on his own, after all. He’s the one that had pointed out that getting to hide the magic was getting harder.

For another thing, he’s free to practise however he feels he needs to. His apartment is a mess within the second week, a whirlwind of collapsed cardboard boxes and various herbs in jars and threads and crystals he’s blessed himself and, occasionally, a couple pieces of laundry that have accidentally tumbled from the laundry basket in his rush to get a delivery out on time.

It’s a mess, and he knows it, but it’s _his_ mess. He’s never had much that’s only his since moving out to go to college; the experience of having roommates is, to date, still a harrowing one.

The best part about living alone, though, has to be the opportunity to keep his crushes to himself. Johnny, after all, has always worn his heart on his sleeve, and his roommates at the time were always waiting with bated breath and good-natured clowning for the next person with whom he fell in love. He doesn’t miss the mockery, however kindly it’d been meant at the time. Too much the romantic, a fault always assigned him by those closest to him (read: Donghyuck, who Johnny loves but is also a self-professed demon come to life). 

Anyway, it’s a good thing, mostly because he can check out the neighbour from down the hall whenever they pass one another on their respective nightly sojourns, few and far between as they are. Their schedules don’t seem to match up often, Johnny not being much of a late-night person, and the neighbour -- Mark, his name is Mark; he’d frantically introduced himself before ducking out of the hallway and into the elevator, leaving Johnny wondering -- seems to keep the witching hour sacred.

It’s a nice parallel. One he wishes he could partake in, if only because he’d like to draw closer to the Goddess, although he keeps falling asleep.

Speaking of which, Johnny thinks, lifting his head from his tiny work desk, lifting the eyepiece from over his eye so that he can see the world at a relatively normal scale -- he hasn’t seen the neighbour recently. Mark, he tells himself again with an audible groan. The crystals between his fingers -- amethyst, the sober stone, meant to keep people from making impulsive decisions -- seem to vibrate when he touches them, to call to him when he lets them go.

They’re telling him not to follow his impulses, to do something that he knows full well will one day embarrass the everloving shit out of him, if he’s ever lucky enough to get caught.

He puts them down anyway, because he’s never been great about listening to signs that aren’t a figurative (or sometimes literal) slap upside the head. In socked feet he rushes to the front door, peering out into the dim view his hallway’s dying fluorescents afford him. No Mark. He checks his watch next. It isn’t even 8pm. It would be far luckier for him to see Mark than not to. He sighs, closes the door, leans against it.

Someday, he _will_ have it in him to ask the cute guy down the hall on a date. They can get coffee, he thinks optimistically, though the number of places that will serve them good coffee at midnight are slim to none around here.

In the later hours, his friends will come over, punch-drunk or just plain drunk, and they’ll ply him with greasy pizza. He has to have this crown finished by then. Good thing he’s almost done, he thinks, going back to his squat desk and stretching out his fingers.

As always, he prays to the Goddess before handling his crystals, head bowed and hands folded with fingers interlaced. It’s the least he can do if he’s going to bless them before sending them off to their purchaser. His whispers fill the workspace, echo around the living room, imbue him with an energy he might not otherwise feel.

Today, he is alive, and he is grateful.

///

His friends come knocking at midnight, and spill into his apartment the way water spills from a tipped basin: slowly at first, and then all at once. 

He’d just gotten finished with his work and is taking a moment to admire it when the door flings open, announcing Donghyuck and his new boything Jaemin. This is how he affords all the extras that being a witch in the modern day costs him -- he makes enchanted jewelry for people who don’t have the hands to do it themselves. He’s always considered himself good with his hands, steady, reliable, and the business reflects that. Not to mention the numbers in his bank account.

Johnny sits back on his heels, admires his handiwork, the way in which the crystals seem to take in the sparse light of his worktable lamp, drinking in the way a plant would the sun, the way he probably needs water.

They’ll love it, he decides silently.

He writes himself a note, is just sticking it to the crown when he feels something warm and enticing wrap around him. “Donghyuck,” he singsongs, tipping his head to gratefully receive the kisses Donghyuck is going to plant all over his face. The shit thing about having a kissy best friend is that you’re always going to be stuck getting their kisses.

“Johnny hyung!” Jaemin is the one to announce himself, even though Johnny had been fully aware of the second presence in his apartment. “I brought food! Not pizza, Hyuckie said you’re tired of it--”

“Oh, for real, I said that? Blessed be, or whatever,” Donghyuck chirps, unraveling himself from around Johnny’s frame once he’s slathered his face in remnant spit and sticky lip gloss. His breath smells faintly of fruit and liquor. “You doing okay, hyung?”

“Yeah,” Johnny says, scrubbing at his cheek with the sleeve of his oversized sweatshirt, the one with all the holes in the neckline. “Just working. You two having fun? Being safe? There’s some weirdos out there, you know.”

“Shut up, hyung, _you’re_ the weirdest thing between the club and the restaurant and this apartment,” Donghyuck reminds him. Kindly. They both know he’s weird. Donghyuck had been the one to teach Johnny all the rituals he knows now, to encourage him to start the business when they still lived together, to give him support when he felt like giving up. “And anyway, Jaeminnie’s got fae blood, you know that? He would protect me from _anything_.”

Johnny doesn’t look too closely into Jaemin’s eyes, now he’s got that information rattling around in his head. “Anyway, what’d you bring me?”

“Thai. That place around the corner that’s open all the time? The one you like?” Jaemin’s busy unpacking the food, but only to the point that he gets his own box of takeout, which he then clutches to his chest. It’s a wonder Johnny didn’t feel the fair folk inside him sooner, what with all the time he and Donghyuck have been spending together at his place recently. “Donghyuck thought you’d like it. Isn’t he such a considerate friend,” and he says it sweetly, but there’s something just left of center about it, especially when he reaches across the pile of unpacked takeout boxes and tweaks the end of Donghyuck’s nose.

“I do like it,” Johnny agrees warily. Maybe he’s just tired. Maybe that’s why he’s reading too far into things. “Thank you. Both of you. I appreciate it.”

Outside the front door, he can hear movement. He’d be damned if he doesn’t shift closer to the door, subtle, unable to do much with his legs still aching from hours of squatting at his work desk.

Donghyuck, through a mouthful of noodles, makes this face. “Am I supposed to tease you for looking out for your crush, or for still not buying a new desk to work at? One with a chair?” He genuinely looks confused, but in that way that reads judgmental. A little. Nicely. 

“Shut up,” grumbles Johnny, all but shoving Donghyuck off the couch, which only _doesn’t_ happen because he’s met with a wail. Whether it’s Jaemin’s or Donghyuck’s, Johnny can’t tell.

Still. He’s listening. He’s waiting.

Eventually his friends pass out on his couch, and he can carry himself to bed without guilt. The clock on the microwave reads 3:11am. He doesn’t usually keep such hours. The only thing that still has him up is cleaning up the empties that his drunk best friend and his drunker boyfriend have left scattered all over his living room. Well, that and the note from earlier, reminding him to set the crystal crown in the moonlight that streams in through his living room window.

When he goes to set the trash bag, clanking loudly in the silent apartment, outside his front door, he gets a glimpse of a dark-haired, sparkly-eyed dream fumbling with the keys to his own deadbolt. “Hey,” Johnny ventures, because he’s too tired to have any comprehensible semblance of self-control or sense of propriety.

Well, that, and Mark has this tendency to make him forget everything he’s thinking, all at once. Johnny’s got to start making himself post-its, or writing on the inside of his arm, or _something_.

Mark. The Neighbour. Bleach-blond and curly haired and wearing some vintage bomber jacket emblazoned with the patches of sports teams Johnny’s never heard of. His legs are stunning in tight jeans, his smile is something bright and awkward and charming, and the way he looks at Johnny like he _sees_ him--

Johnny swears he’s vibrating like one of his crystals just at the sight of him, not to mention the awkward little wave Mark offers him. 

“Hey,” says Mark, before stumbling into his apartment, the lock finally giving way beneath some subtle wiggling of the keys. He makes a sound of great distress, and the door flings shut behind him.

This is the first time Johnny has seen him in ages. It’s a warm balm on a cold, chapped heart. He clutches his chest, then realises he’d been handling literal garbage in his holey sweatshirt and boxers, and before he has the chance to convince himself he is hot even in his pyjamas, he ducks back into the apartment.

The crown, he notes as he pads to bed himself, covering the two-headed amalgamation of bodies that were once separately known as Jaemin and Donghyuck with a soft blanket, glints nicely against the light of the full moon. When he falls asleep, he dreams of eyes of endless obsidian, flecked with red. 

It’s funny. They _almost_ look like Mark’s. _Almost_.

///

It’s another such night, a month later, when the thing he’s been waiting for finally happens. He gets this big order two weeks prior, because his name is getting more and more popular in selective circles. The crown had helped immensely; he’d rush-delivered it upon request, for a wedding, or a ceremony, or something? (He still isn’t super sure about the details; they all get mixed up. Eventually he’ll remember to use that planner Doyoung gave him for business, rather than just keeping track of when he casts spells, or remembers to eat independent of any reminders that could be given him.) The customer, a witch halfway across the world, must have passed on his information to a bunch of people, because suddenly he’s had to actually _close his shop_.

Incredible. The opal he keeps under his pillow must be working better than he thought it was, all things considered, for him to get so lucky. Not that he isn’t lucky naturally. It’s just nice to see it have a focus.

Anyway, he’s working on rush deliveries pretty much every day now, his hands starting to callous and toughen up with how many times he’s stabbed himself with his threading needle. His own fault, and he knows it, for not employing the thimbles he’d given himself as a treat.

Quietly, he likes the roughness of his hands. The gentle headaches he gets from squinting down into tiny holes drilled into the side of various minerals given him by his supplier. The organised chaos his apartment has become.

What he doesn’t like is that he’s having to kick his friends out sooner, and that he’s doing work until all hours of the night. Johnny is, after all, a creature of comfort, someone who has come to love routine and find disruption intolerable. 

Tonight, for example, he’s rushing out to drop packages in the mailbox when he should be asleep. The postage adhered to the shipping envelope crinkles under his fingertips as he clutches his wares tight to his chest; he can smell the lavender he uses to couch his creations when they’re in transit, wafting from beneath the flap keeping his creation in place.

He hopes they like it. That’s all he can ask.

This one is warded with positivity -- a brilliantly-shining, black obsidian stone that he’d polished until his fingers were ready to fall off before drilling into it. He’d charged it twice before using it, and only listed it with a few prior customers rather than the store. Apparently the person buying it needs protection from psychic energy of some kind; they’d explained it to him in detail, but at this hour of night, Johnny can’t seem to remember a thing. This seems to be happening more and more these days, though he can’t say whether it’s because of a lack of organisation so much as the fact that he’s been feeling drained.

He almost forgets his jacket, and only remembers when he goes to slip the key into the lock on his door that his keyring had been in its pocket. He sighs, groans, aggravation slipping into him for just a moment before he prays it away, asks the Goddess to take it from him. Then he’s back inside the door, listening to it creak on its ancient, rusty hinge as he slips into the sleeves, finds his keys, takes himself some comfort.

He flushes a little at the thought of going out this late, watching the halogen pool that streams in the window of the apartment building hallway, almost sickeningly bright when set against the dark backdrop of the near-midnight sky. Maybe, some hopeful part of him puts out into the universe that he might be able to see Mark tonight. 

While waiting for the elevator car to shamble its way up to the 14th floor, Johnny tucks the parcel under his arm inside his jacket’s lining. He listens to the soothing sound of sheet-thin plastic and crunching dried flowers as they smash together beneath his touch. The elevator door slides open before him. 

There stands Mark, covered in blood, a trail leading from the corner of his mouth.

Johnny is so startled that he drops his envelope from beneath his arm. It clatters to the floor, and while there isn’t that telltale sound of thread snapping, crystals knocking against one another, he can’t say he cares much whether or not it gets broken when he’s pretty sure he’s about to be _fucking murdered_.

“Uh,” he says softly, trying to keep it casual, like he isn’t scared out of his mind. “Hi, Mark.”

He is so, so sure he’s going to die. Not that he fears death. He’s been taught better. It’s just...he really doesn’t want to die in this rickety building. Not without sending out this order, anyway. (Good business, even in death. That should be on his new business cards, when he finally remembers to make them.)

Mark doesn’t really seem to be _with it_ , so to speak. He keeps staring down into his hands, which are raised before him, almost chest-level, also coated in blood. The colour runs deep, stuck under his nails. When he finally raises his head, looks up at Johnny with a bit of crane to his neck, he smiles, drags his tongue across his teeth.

“Hey, I could really use some help,” Mark says, brightly, like he isn’t the weirdest thing Johnny will see between here and the post box and the 24 hour Thai place he’d planned on taking himself to. “Can you help me?”

Johnny, heart thundering in his chest, nods. He gnaws his bottom lip. He drags his hand through his hair, the fringe tickling at his temples when it falls back into place.

Mark doesn’t move, though, and only when Johnny reaches out to take one of his outstretched hands does he seem to notice that Johnny has agreed at all.

His smile gleams in that halogen light, when he flashes it Johnny’s way. Johnny’s hand is sticky with blood when he takes it back from Mark’s, immediately regretting that decision but doing nothing to rectify his mistake. It has to be blood, right? Mark doesn’t seem like the type of guy that would play a prank that involved food colouring and corn syrup, after all.

Their tromp back to Johnny’s is a quick one, just a few steps. Mark, though, lingers in the doorway, even when Johnny’s shrugging off his jacket, throwing it over the mess on his couch as he collects the past few days’ worth of takeout boxes and coffee mugs in one arm. He’s still standing there in the frame when Johnny dumps the garbage in its can, stacks the mugs precariously atop one another in the stainless steel sink.

“You can come in, you know,” he tells Mark, smiling, trying to be comforting, even when his skeleton is threatening to hatch right out of his skin.

Only then does Mark tumble in, as if something has released him, allowed him the space and muscle memory required to step into the foyer of Johnny’s one-bedroom. He topples over himself a little more, eventually crash-landing on Johnny’s threadbare couch and grunting when an unfamiliar spring more than likely prods right into him. Mark lies there, hands over his stomach, still as death, and his face winches up in something that might be pain. Like he’s drunk. 

Maybe that’s what this is, Johnny tells himself, starting to wet a couple cloths in warm water, filling a bowl with more with which to wring them out. Maybe he’s been drinking and had some kind of horrible accident. Maybe he just wanted to go home.

Johnny knows he’ll justify anything. Especially when he’s got a hot but very probable murderer in his living room.

He brings the bowl to the coffee table, sets it down carefully, and takes one of Mark’s hands between his own. While he’s trying to chip blood out of Mark’s nail beds, he asks, “What happened to you?”

Mark sort of laughs, dazed. “Full,” is all he says, stretching out his arm so that Johnny doesn’t have to pull on his fingers to get the spaces between clean. “Went out. Now I’m full.”

Johnny’s heart drops into his stomach. All he has is fucking rocks! None of that is useful for protecting him against danger. He should have asked Donghyuck about protective wards as soon as he’d moved in. His mistake, his own scatterbrained bullshit, has now come back to haunt him. Now he’s going to die and no one is going to notice for at least an entire forty-eight hours. At least he’ll make a romantic corpse, surrounded by mess, by dried herbs and flowers, a crown tucked into his chest.

He’s optimistic, what can he say.

“What do you mean?” Johnny is very careful _not_ to meet Mark’s eye in this moment, instead focusing on a particularly difficult dab of blood stuck to Mark’s wrist. “Full.”

“Went out and _ate_ ,” mumbles Mark, like that makes any more sense. He’s got his eyes fixed on Johnny, now, and there’s something to the thin line his pretty mouth has made, this crimson glow to his obsidian gaze, that makes Johnny think he should be running.

He doesn’t.

Instead he thinks about Doyoung’s fixation on true crime, and how he fits the profile of someone it’d take ages to figure out what happened to. _Fits the profile_. He can hear his friend’s voice in the back of his head. A little sigh wrests its way from his throat.

“You’ve got blood down your throat,” says Johnny, gently, a man trying to appease the tiger who plans on eating him. This close, he can see the gentle tint of Mark’s lips, a similar shade of sanguine to the one plastered to him from the neck down. “Can you put your head back for me?”

“You’re cute,” Mark murmurs, doing as he’s bid, his blond curls a pretty halo against the back of Johnny’s couch. It almost does enough to dispel the fear welling up in the back of Johnny’s throat, acidic and dangerous. “You’re so cute, I can’t believe you let me in your house--”

And when he speaks, mouth barely moving, Johnny finally catches sight of one long fang run out, sharp enough to cut through anything.

Enough to cut through Johnny’s flesh, he thinks with a shudder he barely suppresses.

The water in his bowl has run completely red; Johnny dips his cloths in it anyway, interchanging them until having to move is a necessity rather than an inevitability. Mark, for what it’s worth, doesn’t move when Johnny takes the bowl in his hand. When he stage-whispers, “Be right back,” and shuffles back into his kitchen. His limbs are stiff and he hears the train whistle of fear, come to take him away, in his ears. 

He returns with clean water, rinsed cloth stained forever with someone else’s blood. Then he dabs the blood from the bobbing column of Mark’s throat, tender with each touch. “You’re a vampire?” he asks, with all the casual air of someone asking about the weather, the recent score of a vaguely-loved sports team.

“Yeah,” Mark says, eyes hazy and blissed out. “Yeah, isn’t it obvious?” He seems to be coming back to himself, if the steadiness of his voice is any indication. (Johnny doesn’t trust it, although he wants to.) “The person… he had too much. Or I took too much. I think I made myself a little sick?”

And like that, the fear is gone, Johnny tipping his head to one side as he tries to process the idea of a bloodsucker with a bellyache, his eyes too big for his stomach. Mark… Well, Mark has always been cute, albeit in a passive sort of way that speaks to Johnny’s tendency toward infatuation rather than anything about Mark himself.

But this… this is cute. Undeniably so. Johnny, caring bastard that he is, wants to rub Mark’s tummy until he feels better, wants to cuddle him into submission so he sleeps it off.

“You aren’t going to eat me?” he asks, for clarity’s sake.

“ _No,_ man, I just _ate_ ,” Mark whines, flopping back onto Johnny’s couch with a flair for drama that only an old, old, _old_ thing could have.

“Come back, I wasn’t done,” Johnny chastises, taking the opportunity to wring the red from his cloth, like it matters that he’s getting it dirty, smearing wet crimson paint down into the hollow of Mark’s exposed collarbone. Like he isn’t thinking about cleaning it up some other way. “It’s good. For a second there I thought you might have been planning to swallow me whole.”

“No one ever said I wouldn’t swallow you whole,” says Mark, lifting one eyebrow.

Johnny pauses, fingertips poised over the base of Mark’s throat.

“Are you flirting?” he asks, momentarily stunned into inaction.

“Is it working?” Mark sits back up, the corner of his mouth curling into something irresistible. “Have you ever been bitten before?” That run-out fang of his catches in the streetlamps streaming into the living room. 

Johnny has not. He does not know if it’s a good idea to tell Mark as much, lay all his cards on the table. After all, every ex he’s ever had was because he played hard to get. He holds back a grimace at the thought, kicks his knee up onto the couch so that it’s pillowed against Mark’s thigh. “No,” he admits at last, leaning forward to finish his handiwork, definitively _not_ thinking about how much more blood is caked unto Mark’s skin beneath that soaked-through t-shirt he’s wearing. “Should I be interested?”

“Most humans are,” says Mark, almost impassively. He bats away Johnny’s hands, and takes the hinge of Johnny’s jaw between forefinger and thumb, inspecting the planes of his face. “You look like you’d be into it.”

This close, Johnny can smell the blood on Mark’s breath. Can imagine what it’d be like to taste it upon his tongue.

There’s a tingling settled in Johnny’s abdomen, not quite unlike arousal, not that he’s able to admit as much to himself. Every muscle in his body is tense, and his head is ringing with alarm bells, adrenaline urging him to _run while he fucking can_.

He’s saved from having to make that decision when Donghyuck bursts into the apartment, yelling out Johnny’s name. “It’s my turn to make sure you eat,” he announces, stopping dead in the middle of the tiny, broken foyer to stare at the scene on the couch.

“Hey, you’re the hot neighbour,” he says. Johnny flushes all the way down his chest. 

“Yeah, I’m the neighbour,” Mark agrees, turning to glance at Johnny. He mouths the word _hot???_ , making this bewildered face, and Johnny turns an even brighter shade of scarlet under the scrutiny.

Donghyuck doesn’t say anything about the blood, or the fact that Mark is cradling Johnny’s face in his still-dirty palm. “I’m glad you finally came over,” he says, in that breezy way of his, though there’s a cognisant twinkle in his gaze as he surveys them before plopping down onto the end of the couch, between Johnny’s broad back and the arm. “Do you want food? Jaemin’s coming up with food, he’s just on this thing where he wants to climb stairs? I think he just discovered they exist or something.” He gives Johnny a concerned look, one that asks: _Are you okay?_

Johnny just says, “I think Mark has had enough to eat tonight,” and lets out a strangled laugh that comes off more hysterical than he actually feels. “Did you know Mark was a vampire?”

“Oh, yeah, did you not?” Donghyuck rolls his eyes, “His energy is, like, all over the place. I think that’s why you’re forgetting everything lately. Remind me to ward the apartment later?” He laughs, rests his forehead on the back of Johnny’s shoulder, nuzzling in. He smells faintly of fruit and liquor. “Seriously, hyung, it’s _sooooooo_ obvious.”

Mark guffaws, claps his hands, _obviously_ delighted. “That’s what I said!” The both of them reach over Johnny’s shoulder to exchange high-fives.

Johnny wants to sink into the couch and disappear entirely. It’s only when he feels a hand wrapped around the curve of his knee that he abandons this notion. It’s Mark, who’s boring into his eyes with a stare of his own, one that speaks of promise, when they’re alone.

“Next time you can come over to mine,” he mumbles, so low that Johnny can let himself believe Donghyuck won’t hear.

Johnny grins. “You gonna invite me in?” And he rests his hand over Mark’s, just a moment, just long enough to trace the shapes of his knuckles. 

Mark’s hand flips up from beneath his, squeezes gently around his palm. “Promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](http://twitter.com/appiarian)


End file.
